Positivism

That it is possible to and desirable to apply the logic and methods of the natural sciences to the study of society. Doing so will bring us true, objective knoweldge of the same type as that found in the natural sciences. 

A key feature of the positivist apporach is the belief that reality exists outside and independently of the human mind:

- nature is made up of objective, observable, phusical facts, such as rocks, cells, star etc, which are external to our mind and exist whether we like it or not.

- similarly, society is an objective factual reality- it is a real 'thing' made up of social facts that exists 'out there', independently of individuals, just like the physical world.

When inductive reasoning claims to verify a theory- thay is, prove it true. 

Positivists seek to discover the causes of the patterns they observe. They aim to produce general statements or scientific laws about how society works. These can then be used to predict future events and to guide social policies. They favour 'macro' or structural explanations of social phenomena, such as functionalism and Marxism. 

Believe that sociology should take the experimental method used in the natural sciences as the model for research. 

They use quantitative data to uncover and measure patterns of behaviour. This allows them to produce mathematically precise statements about the relationship between the facts they are investigating. They seek to discover the laws of cause of effect that determine behaviour.

They believe that researchers should be detached and objective from research. 

Emile Durkheim (1897) chose to study suicide to show that sociology was a science. He believed tha if he could prove that even such a highly individual act has social causes, this would establish sociology's status as a genuienly scientific discipline. 

He observed that were were patterns in the suicide rate. For example, rates for Protestants were higher than for Catholics.

According to Durkheim, the social facts determining the suicide rates were the level of intergration and regulation. For example, Catholics were less likely to commit suicide because Catholicism was more successful in intergrating individuals.

Thus, Durkehim claimed to have discovered a 'real law': that different levels of intergation and regulation produce different rates of suicide. He claimed to have demonstrated that sociology had its own unique subject matter which could be explained scientifically.